![]() ‘These signals are extremely difficult to find,’ said Professor McDonald. These new events do not show an accompanying longer signal that might be expected from a host star, suggesting that these new events may be free-floating planets. However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth. Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground. ![]() The study team found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days. Gravity from the closer star acts as a lens and magnifies the distant star over the course of the transit. ![]() It was launched specifically by NASA with the aim of identifying planets outside of our own Solar System, known as exoplanets.įor this project, researchers used data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope – an extension of its original mission.ĭuring its two-month K2 campaign, Kepler monitored a crowded field of millions of stars near the centre of our Galaxy every 30 minutes in order to find rare gravitational microlensing events.ĭuring gravitational microlensing, a viewpoint, a close star and a brighter and more distant star come into close alignment for a few weeks or months. Kepler launched in 2009 and was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 when it ran out of fuel needed for further science operations. The now retired Kepler telescope spent nearly a decade in space looking for Earth-size planets orbiting other stars, but scientists are still analysing its data. This is an artist impression of the Kepler Space Telescope that was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 after nearly a decade of service
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